


Some Mild Attempted Arson

by Luddleston



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Dates, First Kiss, Fluff, Gay Disaster Lio Fotia, Getting Together, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Meet-Cute, Meis and Guiera have a cat, Unconfirmed Meis/Guiera, unnecessarily shirtless Galo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25339873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luddleston/pseuds/Luddleston
Summary: Lio didn'twanthis smoke alarm to go off for so long the fire department showed up.But he's not exactly complaining about the fact that the fireman who's arrived at his doorstep is the most goddamn gorgeous man he's ever seen.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 10
Kudos: 262





	Some Mild Attempted Arson

**Author's Note:**

> I actually started writing this right after I first saw Promare, and then just.... didn't finish it. Then I rediscovered it a few months later, went "hey this is good where's the rest" and made the rest a thing. 
> 
> I got no idea whether there are home smoke detectors that can call the fire dept for you but I'm the DM and I say so. 
> 
> Also, Meis and Guiera are fully aware that nobody can figure out whether they're dating and they like it that way and continue to confuse people on purpose.

The smoke alarm went off long enough that the building's automated system called the fire department, and honestly, Lio was just glad there weren't sprinklers installed anywhere in the ceiling. 

That was the problem with these newly-constructed buildings and their state-of-the-art safety and security systems. The smoke alarms were overly sensitive and tended to start screaming when Lio so much as forgot to turn the stove hood on, and today he'd learned that they had the capability to ping emergency services with an S.O.S., even if Lio _would_ have come right back in and shut them off. That is, if he hadn't been following the goddamn cat out the window and onto the fire escape. 

He managed to get back inside, his arm clawed to all hell, just in time for the insistent pounding at the door to turn into shouting. Ever since the fire truck rolled into the parking lot blaring even louder than his alarm, Lio had been hoping they didn't feel the need to force entry. His landlord wasn't fond of him already—god only knew what she'd do if she found out a fireman had put an axe through his front door because Lio didn't have the foresight to turn the burner off before selflessly venturing out to rescue a cat that was only in his apartment in the first place because he was such a good friend. 

Incidentally, he was never cat-sitting for Meis and Guiera again. 

Lio slammed the window shut and sped across the apartment, unlocking the door and only opening it as far as the deadbolt would allow, because he didn't trust the horrible animal not to dart out the front door when the window was no longer an option. 

"I'm fine." He didn't sound fine, he sounded like he was out of breath and had just wrangled a cat who was very inappropriately named 'Angel' and probably housed half a dozen demons. 

"Your alarm's still going off," announced the fireman standing in full gear just on the other side of the six-inch gap of open door. "Also, that's kind of a lot of smoke." 

Shiiiiit. He knew there was something else he had to do between shutting the window and assuring Promepolis's finest he was not setting his own apartment on fire to see what he could get out of his renter's insurance. "It's fine. I just burned my food." It would've been a very good stir-fry, too, had it not met such an unfortunate end. 

"Well, I kinda need to come in and take a look, just to give the all-clear." The fireman looked over his shoulder to shout something at his team, which Lio didn't quite catch over the irritation bubbling up inside him, about to spill over like a soda bottle that had been opened too soon after somebody dropped it on the ground. 

"Fine. But you have to shut the door, or else this cat I'm watching will get out." Lio undid the deadbolt, mentally calculating how much Meis and Guiera owed him for their demon cat's antics. 

"What? Oh, yeah, sure, of course." He slammed the door a little too loud after stepping inside, following Lio as he rushed into the kitchen to switch off the offending burner. The food was mostly charcoal. The pan was going to need some serious scrubbing if he ever wanted to use it again. The day was looking worse and worse. 

Lio waved what he could of the smoke in the direction of the stove hood, which, in his defense, _was_ turned on. "See? I've got this under control."

"Sure do," said the fireman, in a way that made Lio think he was being laughed at. His would-be rescuer took off his hat, tucking it under his arm, and Lio had never exactly considered whether it was against the rules for firefighters to have neon blue hair, but he sure as hell was considering it now. "How'd this even happen, anyway? You know you're supposed to keep an eye on things if the stove's on, right?" 

"Of course I do, I'm a grown adult," Lio said, although some stranger at work had asked if he was their new high-school intern last week. "It was the cat's fault. That thing's a monster. I opened the window like three inches and it somehow got through." 

"He doesn't seem too bad." The monster in question was winding its way around the fireman's legs, begging for cuddles. Traitor. Demon animal. 

Lio eyed the beast scornfully. It eyed him back with a very human kind of self-satisfaction, more proof that the creature was possessed. "Yeah, well, I rescued him from the fire escape and got this for it." He extended his forearm, which was still bleeding, the marks from the cat's claws beginning to turn puffy and irritated around the edges. 

The fireman gaped at it like Lio had been stricken with a life-threatening wound, and Lio really wished there was some magic phrase he could pull out to get this guy to leave his goddamn apartment. "You need to put something on that! We have first aid stuff in the truck—" 

"I've got a first aid kit in my bathroom, too," Lio said, even though his 'first aid kit' was just a battered box of band-aids and a half-empty tube of Neosporin. "Seriously, I'm okay. There's probably something else on fire somewhere in the city." As in, _leave and go handle that instead._

A frown. "Are you sure? I could get you bandaged up, it's kind of my job." 

"I'm sure." 

The fireman stooped down to pet Angel, who leaned into the touch like the world's most loving companion, and Lio continued to sneer at the cat. Of course. Sucking up to the authorities. The fireman stood, fixing Lio with a bright smile. "Well, I'll leave you to it, then. Try not to set anything else on fire!" 

Lio didn't bother remarking that he hadn't set anything on fire in the first place, just gave the fireman a sarcastic salute and watched him head back through the front door. 

_He was kind of attractive,_ said a small, irritating part of Lio's brain. 

He didn't have time to dwell on that, though, because the Cat From Hell decided to leap up onto Lio's kitchen counter and eat the burned remains of Lio's dinner. 

"Honestly, are you _trying_ to kill yourself before they get back?" 

— — — 

When Lio drove the Demon Furball back over to Meis and Guiera's apartment, it howled the whole way there. Of course, it immediately stopped once the cat carrier was open and it was free to sit directly on Meis's open suitcase, which was spilling dirty clothes all over the living room rug. 

_"How was the road trip?"_ Lio would have asked politely, if Meis and Guiera weren’t the kind of friends who already knew Lio was a bit of a shit. "Your cat is a demon," he said instead. "Straight out of hell. I've no idea why you called it 'Angel'." 

"He's named after a vampire," Guiera said. He was crouched over the suitcase, cooing at the cat, which was now rolled onto its back and batting playfully at Guiera's hand. 

"You'd know this if you agreed to watch Buffy with us," Meis added. 

He was never agreeing to watch Buffy with them. "Anyway, you owe me dinner. I burned mine because I was trying to keep your vampire from escaping into the wilds of my back alley. I had the fire department called on me and everything. You probably owe me drinks, too." He hadn't even shown them his arm yet, but that would require unbuttoning his sleeves, which was too much effort. 

Meis shrugged, itching at a spot of peeling sunburn on his shoulder. Lio winced in sympathy. Guiera tanned, the lucky bastard. He didn’t know how bad they had it. "Yeah, we probably do owe you that." 

"Let's go out! Not like there's any food in the house," Guiera said, patting the cat on the head until it became irritated with him. "There's that Italian place we wanted to try, right?" He looked at Lio as though Lio was supposed to remember that Italian place they wanted to try. 

Lio just said, "yeah, sure." He only realized about an hour later what a mistake that had been. 

— — — 

The Italian place, name which Lio hadn't ever gotten, was packed, and Lio was exceedingly grateful that somewhere between all their chattering about the road trip, either Meis or Guiera had managed to make a reservation. 

He was less grateful when he realized the table they'd reserved was shoved toward the back and directly in front of the area designated as the "event room," which was fully in use, packed with an all-too-loud crowd that was ordering approximately a pizza a minute. 

The restaurant was best-known for its pizza, apparently, but Lio couldn't possibly imagine that a group of any size could eat that many. He ignored it, and tuned back into Guiera's story about their car breaking down on the way back, still three hours from home. 

"So, at this point, I still can't find any service, so Meis says I should climb up a tree to see if my phone gets a better signal—spoiler alert, it did not—and while I'm up there, I look down and—" 

Guiera was cut off by the door to the event room opening and a cacophony of laughter and voices spilling out. Lio rolled his eyes and waited for the door to swing shut again. "Honestly, if they weren't so loud, I might actually be able to hear myself think whenever the door opens."

"Well, Lio, at least if you set anything on fire again, we'll be safe." Meis pointed at the sign on the door, informing them that the room was reserved for the local fire station's event. 

Lio groaned. "I didn't even set anything on fire, and it was your stupid cat's… fault…" He trailed off, catching a flash of electric blue among the crowd. Fuuuck. Something had it out for him, clearly. Fate, the universe, whatever. 

"What?" Meis asked, craning around to follow the direction of Lio's stare. 

"What, what?" Guiera asked, because he hadn't noticed Lio's hesitation in the first place. 

"That's the guy who responded when my fire alarm rang the department. The one who lectured me on not burning down my building." 

Guiera joined them in all staring uncomfortably at the glass door to the event room. "Dude, how do you even recognize—oh. The blue hair?" 

"Yeah. The blue hair." Lio tried to look back at his food, to avoid staring directly at the person he was talking about, but Meis and Guiera had no such tact. 

"He's hot," Meis said. "You should've hit that." 

Lio, who had picked the wrong time to take a drink, choked. "I don't think your spawn of Satan would have approved," he said, once he regained the ability to breathe. "Also, he was in full uniform. I mean, I knew his face was… yeah, but I didn't think his body would be, uh." 'Uh' was a synonym for 'extremely toned,' or 'able to bench press three people,' or 'capable of doing way more things on a firepole than sliding down it.' Because the over-enthusiastic fireman was built like someone had designed a human man having only ever seen human men in superhero comics. His shoulders were massively wide, but his waist was almost as thin as Lio's, and his biceps looked like they were stretching the sleeves of his black T-shirt to the limit. 

If you'd asked Lio that morning if he had a type, he would've said, _"I don't know, someone not terrible looking, I guess."_ If you asked Lio the same after witnessing this adonis of a human being, he would've said, _"that."_

"You mean you weren't even imagining he might be cut under the fireman suit?" Guiera asked. He was still leaning over the back of his chair to stare. 

"I was trying to imagine him unattractively. Maybe all awkward and lanky. Like Meis." 

"Hey!" Meis kicked Lio under the table. 

"I'm just saying, that dude looks like he's not an actual fireman, he's just a stripper who dresses like one." 

Lio could have done without that particular note, thanks, Guiera. 

"Uh, he's also walking over here." 

And that note could have come sooner. Thanks, Meis. Lio didn't even have time to duck underneath the tablecloth and hide. 

"Hey!" The fireman still sounded just as exuberant as he had when he was stating the obvious in Lio's kitchen. "Haven't set anything on fire again, have you?" 

"I have not, in fact." Not for lack of trying. The demon cat did not approve of scented candles, and instead attempted to bat them off the side of the coffee table, which actually _would_ have been cause to call the fire department. 

"I, myself, have committed some light arson in the past week," Guiera lied, leaning back in his chair and grinning lazily at the newcomer, waiting for a reaction. 

And god, did he get one. The fireman's eyes went wide, as though Guiera had, with complete honesty, just admitted to murder. "Wait, what? Really!?" 

"No, not really," Lio said. "It was a joke." He looked imploringly at Meis, begging with his eyes to be set free from this whole situation. _Get rid of him,_ said Lio's eyes. Meis was inscrutable in his response. 

"Oh." The fireman rubbed a hand at the back of his neck, suddenly awkward. "Guess I missed that.”

Meis leaned forward and Lio held a sigh of relief in his chest as the end of the conversation crested the horizon. "Hey, I'm Meis," he said, instead of anything that would make this moment end. Lio's sigh of relief turned into one of exasperation as it left his mouth. "This is Guiera, and Lio." _No, no, no, you idiot._

"I'm Galo! Nice to meet you guys." He shook Meis's hand, then Guiera's. He did not shake Lio's hand, because Lio was at the far end of the table, and because Lio had his arms crossed over his chest and was not moving. 

"Anyway, we hear you saved our precious son," Guiera said, to another puzzled look from Galo. 

"He means their cat," Lio explained, because somebody had to. He didn't want to keep talking to Galo. He didn't want to think about how a V-neck was definitely the right cut for the guy, because his pectorals were. Something. Right. "Their cat that I was watching. Which _I_ saved from climbing out the window to his death." 

"Actually, I meant you," Guiera corrected him. 

"I'm not your son, either." Lio looked around briefly for the waiter. He needed another drink. Another drink that Meis and Guiera were buying, for keeping this up for so long. 

"No, Lio's our Mom Friend," Meis said, which _was_ technically his title among the trio, unless it was karaoke night and someone gave him tequila, and then his title was 'Slutty Friend,' or perhaps 'Friend Who Really Loves Beyonce.' 

"Oh! I've got one of those," Galo said, pointing back toward the event room. Lio couldn't tell who he was pointing at, considering the entire motley crew in there. "Her name's Aina. You'd probably get along! Oh, hey, Lu—" 

Another member of the Fire Brigade, or whatever they were called in the twenty-first century, appeared from some unknown corner of the crowded restaurant and seized Galo by the arm, dragging him back toward their table. "Come on, Galo, let's go, you know you're not allowed to talk to strangers!" 

"They're not strangers!" Galo argued, going along with her, even though she was barely five feet tall and Galo was built like a tank. 

"We sort of are," Lio argued. They definitely weren't friends. Barely even acquaintances. 

"Nah! You’re not strangers if I know your names.'Bye, Lio! See you around!" 

He definitely would not see Lio around.

— — — 

Lio was in the shower when the smoke alarm split the air with a piercing wail, which meant one of two things. 

One: his smoke detector had truly failed to function and was now detecting the steam from Lio's (admittedly boiling) shower as sign of a bathroom fire. 

Two: Meis had lied about knowing how to cook popcorn on the stove, and had burned it in the process. 

From the smell, it seemed to be the second option. 

"Meis!" Lio shouted over the screeching, because there was no way he was getting out of the shower for this. "Turn that thing off!" 

The reply came muffled through the bathroom door. "I'm getting it, hold on!"

Lio could just barely hear Meis scrambling around over the sound of the alarm, which Meis was not getting, it seemed. He continued to wash his hair. Meis could deal with whatever he brought down upon himself, then. Lio staunchly refused to help unless he was forced to do so. 

He became slightly more motivated when the alarm was joined by sirens. Apparently the answer to 'how many of Lio's friends does it take to turn off a fire alarm' was 'more than two.' 

By the time Lio managed to hurriedly scrub the last of his shampoo from his hair and step into his sweatpants, he could hear sirens. “What are you two _doing!?”_ he demanded to know, because the answer sure as hell wasn’t 'preventing Lio's apartment from catching fire'. 

Meis had his mouth open to answer, but Lio didn't get to hear whatever dumb excuse he was coming up with, because there was a sharp knock at the door. 

_"Fuck you both,"_ Lio hissed as both of them pointedly looked between him and the door. _"I know you did this on purpose."_

"We would never light your house on fire on purpose," Guiera swore, hand to his heart. 

They would, however, set off the smoke alarm on purpose, if that purpose happened to be their ridiculous plan to set Lio up with a firefighter. 

Exactly as Dipshits One and Two planned, Lio opened the door to find Galo on the other side. 

"Lio, dude, what did I say about lighting fires!?" he asked, peering over Lio's shoulder to assess the situation and relaxing when he caught sight of Meis and Guiera clearly trying to get rid of the evidence. The smell of burnt popcorn was probably evidence enough, anyway. 

"You caught me. I'm trying to burn down my building for the insurance payout," Lio said flatly. 

"Don't even joke about that, man," Galo said, and he shook his head but didn't quite hide his smile. "That's some serious criminal charges." 

"Yes, well, if you want to chastise someone for setting fires, the culprits are behind me. I have an alibi." He pointed to his hair, which was still dripping. "Shower." 

"Uh… yeah." 

Lio squinted at Galo and resolutely did not let himself believe that Galo was checking him out. He was suddenly very aware that he had not put on a shirt before answering the door. 

Galo cleared his throat. "Anyway, I think I can safely say everything's fine here." 

"Mm. You might want to call the police, though. I might murder them." Lio sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "My microwave is going to stink for weeks." 

"Vinegar," Galo said, "stick some water in a bowl with like a tablespoon of vinegar and microwave it for five minutes. Works every time!" 

"Speaking from experience?" Lio asked. 

It was hard to tell under the heavy padded jacket, but he thought Galo shrugged. "Somebody's always making something weird in the microwave at the firehouse." 

"Huh," he said, "thanks." 

Galo gave him a little two-finger salute as he headed back down the hall. 

_"Lio!"_ Meis whisper-shouted from behind him. "Lio, you didn't get his number!" 

"I wasn't _trying_ to get his number," Lio said, "goddammit, Meis, he's at work." 

"Bet that's the only reason he didn't ask you for yours," Guiera said. 

"Go take the trash out," Lio ordered him. "I can't believe you two." 

— — — 

"Hey, Lio, can you call the fire department for me?" Guiera shouted from over the fence, literally as soon as Lio showed up at their place. His kickstand wasn't even on the ground. 

"Not funny!" 

Guiera made an irritated noise. "I'm actually serious, Lio, Angel's stuck in the tree in the side yard, we've been trying to get him down for an _hour."_

Maybe if they hadn't adopted the kind of cat that turned you into a dog person, this wouldn't be happening right now. "I'm not _calling the fire department!"_ Lio shouted back, still standing on the sidewalk because Angel the Cat still had a vendetta against him, and Lio was sure a great way to get him out of the tree would be to walk close enough that the cat jumped directly onto him and shredded his favorite shirt.

"Why not?" asked a voice from behind him, and Lio made an undignified screech for half a second before his mouth refused to make any other sounds at all. 

Sure, he'd known Meis and Guiera lived close to the Promepolis F.D., they complained about the sirens enough, but he'd never considered the fact that they were on Galo the Hot Fireman's jogging route. 

Turned out, they were. 

Turned out, Galo went jogging shirtless. 

Turned out, Lio was even more of a gay disaster than previously assumed. 

Galo must have been running for a while, because he was sweating, and that should have been gross. Lio shouldn't have wanted to _lick_ him. That was disgusting. But Galo was _glistening_ in the midday sun, and Lio wondered about the burn scars on his arm for approximately one second before becoming summarily distracted by his chest. 

"Lio?" 

He didn't know how long he'd been staring for. Seconds, minutes, maybe? But it wasn't his fault that Galo was still breathing hard, his rib cage expanding, and Lio wanted to _touch,_ and— 

"Yeah?" His voice came out in a gasp. God, if he could just keep it together for one whole second, that would be fantastic. 

"Oh, hey!" Guiera said, opening the gate to their yard (which was barely a yard, as it was approximately eight feet wide, but Lio didn't even have a balcony, so) and joining the awkward encounter outside his house. "Perfect timing. I know this is like, the most stereotypical request in the book, but do you think you can get our cat out of this tree?" 

"Sure," Galo said, without even looking at the tree, "that's like, first week of fireman training." 

Guiera visibly sighed with relief. "Thank you. I honestly don't even know how he got up there." 

"Yeah, I can definitely get up there," Galo said, following Guiera into the yard where Meis was still trying to lure Angel down with cat treats. He should have known that cat only fed on souls. "Hold this?" 

He handed Lio his water bottle, which Lio accepted with a mute nod, because apparently one word was enough for his brain when faced with… that. Galo's back, he'd discovered, was just as toned as his front, and the athletic shorts he wore rode low on his hips, so that Lio got a real good view of the dimples in his lower back. 

Lio wasn't entirely sure how he'd ended up standing in the yard, watching Galo enthusiastically swing himself up into a tree while Angel yowled and Guiera cheered him on. 

"If you don't ask him out," Meis said, sneaking up on Lio because Lio was the most distracted he'd been in a long time, "I will." 

"You _have_ a boyfriend," Lio said, pointing. 

"That has been neither confirmed nor denied." 

"Yeah, right." Lio was pretty sure they'd gotten secretly married on that road trip. 

"He's not at work," Meis noted.

"Huh?" 

Meis gestured toward the tree shenanigans with a glass of lemonade he'd gotten from god-knows-where. "That's why you wouldn't ask him out before, yeah? He's not at work now." He offered the glass to Lio, who accepted it gratefully. His mouth had become very dry in the past few minutes. 

Galo was able to rescue the cat with relative ease, because Angel seemed to have actually taken to him during that singular encounter in Lio's apartment. He returned the beast to Meis to many gracious thanks and tears of joy, while Lio drank the rest of his lemonade standing in the shade of the house and resolutely not looking in Galo's direction. 

Well, it worked until Galo stood right next to him, and Lio turned, and got a faceful of his pectorals again, because Lio was exactly Galo's-chest-height. Convenient. 

"Hey, can I have that back?" Galo asked, and Lio tossed over his water bottle, which Galo caught without ever taking his eyes off Lio's. "Good thing I happened to be coming by, huh?" 

"It would've come down eventually," Lio said. A bead of sweat trailed down Galo's neck to settle in his clavicle. Lio chewed on his lip. 

"Yeah, but I got to see you," Galo said, "and you didn't even have to set anything on fire." 

"I don't set fires so that I can see you!" Only his friends did. 

Galo shook his head. "Yeah, that's probably wishful thinking." 

Lio was very impressed with himself for managing not to spit out his drink. "Is it?" His voice wasn't as even as he'd like, but he'd take a win where he found one. 

"Well. Yeah. I mean, you're cute. After that time we met at the restaurant, Aina made me take that call from your apartment so I could see you again—obviously, though, I couldn't ask you out, that'd be unprofessional, I mean, I was at _work."_

"That's what I said!" Lio gesticulated so forcefully with the glass that the ice cubes clinked and one of them dropped out onto the ground. "I told them, you can't ask someone out while they're at work. Those two have been together so long they don't know how dating works anymore." 

"They're together?" 

"Honestly, even I'm not sure sometimes." Lio sighed. His point stood. Meis and Guiera were idiots. 

"So," Galo said, after a moment. 

"So?" 

"Will you go on a date with me?" 

Like he'd say no to the most gorgeous man he'd ever seen, while said gorgeous man was shirtless and looking at Lio with this kind of hopeful intensity that made Lio feel like he was on fire. "Why not?" 

"Awesome!" Galo hugged him, which made Lio accidentally tip the rest of the contents of his glass onto the lawn, and also gave him a small heart attack. 

Galo was halfway out the gate before Lio's brain came back online, and he realized he'd forgotten something. 

"Wait, hey, I need your phone number, dumbass!" 

— — — 

The sun was nearly below the horizon when they came to a stop near the shore of a small lake. Lio had discovered that Galo also drove a motorcycle, an odd commonality he hadn't expected to share, and he'd had to stamp down hard on his eagerness to climb on behind Galo and hold on. 

"I've never been out here," Lio said, looking up at the peaks of the pine trees that surrounded the body of water, watching orange and purple twilight shimmer on the other side of the rock formations on the far shore. 

"Most people don't know about it," Galo said, "but I like to come out here, get away from the city, you know?" He pulled a folded picnic blanket from the storage compartment on his bike, spreading it out near the shore, and Lio was a bit struck trying to remember whether he'd ever been on a first date like this before. 

"To be quite honest, I was expecting dinner or a movie or something," Lio admitted, taking a seat next to him. "This is nice, though. You're either a romantic or a serial killer." 

"Hey! What kind of serial killer has EMT training?" He prodded Lio in the side, where he was ticklish, sending him into helpless laughter as he batted Galo's hand away. 

"A smart one," he said eventually, and caught Galo shaking his head out of the corner of his eye.

As the last rays of sunlight faded, the stars began to illuminate, and Lio couldn't help but stare, a little breathless. He'd lived in big cities almost his whole life, with too much light pollution to see anything but the brightest stars. Here, it was like the galaxy was spilled out above them, moonlight reflecting off the surface of the lake, starlight reflected in Galo's eyes when Lio turned to him and said, "it really is beautiful out here." 

"Yeah." Galo wasn't looking at the stars as he agreed, focused on Lio's face instead, his fingertips brushing Lio's hair out of his face. 

With anyone else, it would've felt cheesy, forced, rom-com-esque, but Galo was so unwaveringly honest in everything he said and did, Lio was hard-pressed to believe this was something so simple as a come-on. 

Lio himself was not quite as guileless, and he definitely had an agenda when he remarked, "getting cold, now that the sun's gone down." 

"Oh! Do you want my jacket?" Galo asked, ever the gentleman, and Lio shook his head, smiling despite himself because despite the fact that he should have been put off by Galo's imperceptiveness, he was charmed. 

"Not quite," Lio said, leaning in, putting his arms around Galo's waist. 

Galo let out a startled little laugh but pulled Lio closer, his arms warm, holding him with the perfect amount of pressure. "Lio, if you want a hug, you can just ask for one," he said. Despite the casual note to his voice, Lio could feel his heart racing, and was glad he wasn't the only one. 

"What about a kiss?" Lio asked. "Can I just ask for one of those, too?" 

"Sure, 'course you can." Galo's face was buried in his hair, but Lio could hear the smile on his mouth. 

He pulled back, just enough to see Galo's face. "So?" 

"So?" Galo asked, a confused tilt to his eyebrows. 

"Are you going to kiss me, or not?" 

"Oh! Oh, shit, was that you asking?" Galo's eyes were wide, and remained that way when Lio pushed at him until he was flat on his back on the blanket. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Lio swore there was a flush to his cheeks. 

"Yes," he said, tracing one fingertip from Galo's collarbone to his chin, tipping his face up. "And this is me telling you: kiss me." 

Galo struggled for a moment, like he'd forgotten how to breathe, and then he said, "yes, okay, yes, come here," and pulled Lio in, crushing him close, his lips startlingly gentle in contrast to the way he held Lio tight. 

When Lio began to respond, Galo's unstoppable energy took over, and he kissed Lio with the messiness of someone who didn't have much practice, but who desperately wanted… him. In all Galo's easygoing smiles and casual banter, Lio hadn't realized quite how infatuated Galo was with him until Galo was eagerly leaning into his touch, trying his best to lean in whatever direction Lio nudged him. 

Lio pulled away after a long moment, and Galo looked at him, mouth hanging open slightly, both literally and figuratively starry-eyed. 

"God," Lio said, swallowing as he tried to remember how to breathe at a normal pace. 

"Yeah," Galo agreed. 

"Remind me to thank my building management for their shitty fire alarms," Lio noted, and Galo laughed so hard, Lio couldn't kiss him for at least five minutes.

**Author's Note:**

> I might end up finishing another one of my old incomplete promare fics after I convince my friends to watch it with me now that i have the blu-ray but who knoooooows


End file.
